LOCATE: Child Care Saves the Day

The Tanners found out their child care provider would be shutting its doors. With only 30 days’ notice, the Silver Spring family scrambled to find another provider for their eight-month-old son, Lucas.

The Tanners are ready thanks to LOCATE: Child Care.

“We tried searching on our own and were not coming up with nearly as much as we had hoped for. So I decided to call the phone number instead,” Matt Tanner says. “That was way better than looking for it on our own.”

The number he called was Maryland Family Network’s LOCATE: Child Care. This free referral service is the only database with detailed information on all regulated child care in Maryland. What makes LOCATE: Child Care truly unique, is the personalized service provided to parents by trained Referral Specialist.

“I was able to get very specific. Even the exact neighborhood and streets that I was looking for,” Matt says. “We got seven or eight that were very specific on criteria—location, price, what we were looking for in terms of pets, and smoking or nonsmoking. I was able to get the education and certification level of each provider.”

Thanks to LOCATE: Child Care, the Tanners have found a new licensed child care provider and will be able to transition Lucas without any time in between. The Tanners are paying it forward by recommending the free service to their friends who are now expecting a baby.

“If you are looking for child care, I can’t imagine not calling the number. It made it so much easier,” Matt says.